As I sit down on the eve of my 40th birthday to write this editorial, I couldn’t have thought of writing on a more important aspect – as great political leadership is what India requires more than anything else today. And though I have written considerably on leadership, it has mainly been about corporate leadership. Leadership in corporations is massively different from political leadership, and therefore it requires a special model and a special line of thinking. While in corporations the final aim is profit maximization in most cases, in politics the final objective is necessarily social welfare maximization. While in corporations the best leaders are often the best marketing guys, in politics the best leaders necessarily have to be the people who are the sincerest and most hard working. While in business you can make do without the knowledge of economics, in politics that can be suicidal. While in business being unethical can harm you and at most your stake holders, in politics the lack of ethics ruins an entire nation’s future. And most importantly, while in corporations leadership is about commitment to the strongest and survival of the fittest, in political leadership, the focus always is about commitment to the weakest and survival of the weakest – concepts about which I wrote a few issues back in Business & Economy (a Planman Media group publication), when I wrote about responsible leadership (please do log on to our website and check out the link for the same: http://www.businessandeconomy.org/27102011/storyd.asp?sid=6462&pageno=1). Thus, for me, political leadership is not just about having certain qualities but also simultaneously about not having various qualities. Rather, what is important is to ensure that one does not possess certain specific qualities first; if that is taken care of, the rest would then automatically fall in place. Keeping all the above in mind, I believe the model of the 7 winning virtues of political leadership (viz Credibility, Compassion, Clairvoyance, Camaraderie, Commitment, Charisma and Competence) that I have developed is most suited for Politicians in general and Indian politicians in particular, keeping in mind the spate of massive corruption scandals of late! So what is so special about these 7 Cs of leadership that has not been read before? After all, is it not just another word play? Well, the difference in this model and any other such model is that in this model, each element or virtue is actually the opposite of one of the 7 sins of life – the seven deadly sins that we are supposed to avoid; to a large extent, as normal human beings and to an almost extreme extent, as a political leader! The seven sins originally are Greed, Gluttony, Sloth, Envy, Lust, Pride and Wrath! So how are these related, you must be wondering! Let’s go one by one! The first sin that a leader must avoid is that of greed. This is what seems to be the biggest problem with political leaders in India. Greed. The reason behind all the lack of development in India at the cost of swelling Swiss bank accounts. Every politician looks at politics as a source of making quick money at the cost of the nation. And thus, instead of looking at the Commonwealth Games as a brilliant chance to develop the nation and its sports facilities – the way China looked at Olympics – they looked at the games as an opportunity to create a massive scam and looted the nation shamefully. So instead of looking at telecommunications as a big chance of taking the country towards better development, our leaders looked at it as a chance to loot and plunder. And this is where my first C of leadership gains importance. The virtue of credibility! Instead of greed, and dishonesty, political leadership is about credibility. That’s what defines a political leader’s true character. Once you lose credibility, you can still continue thanks to various reasons, but with no respect. That’s what most Indian politicians today suffer: the problem of credibility. Read More.... For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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This editorial comes at this crucial juncture when the ruling government and the opposition (that includes some Congress allies in the government too) have locked horns over the entry of foreign private players in the retail segment. The debate was imperative as the retail industry has always been considered as the nervous system of any nation, and this industry has in most of the cases even helped nations revive themselves during bad times. So it was interesting to evaluate the entire debate from an analytical dimension as well. Currently, the organized retail in India is only 2 per cent of the retail industry; clearly, a huge opportunity is waiting to be unleashed. The opportunity can be gauged from the fact that the American organized retail market is 80 per cent of the overall retail market, Thailand is at 40 per cent and China at 20 per cent! If on one hand organised retail is a global reality, then on the other, the Indian middle class has the given power to splurge, making the proposition viable. Then why is there a protest? The fact is that the ongoing nationwide protests against foreign entry in retail are a bit too late, too baseless and based more on a campaign by emotionally charged political parties which lack pragmatism. After allowing FDI everywhere else, why at all these recent dramatics against retail? Every government in the past has made deals and allowed FDI to enter systematically into India without a plan in place to make Indian firms competitive beforehand. We systematically ruined Indian competitiveness; yet, now for publicity, are creating a hullaballoo against the opening up of retail. The fact is, FDI in retail is inevitable. And not that there are no benefits. If things go right, then the entry of foreign firms in the long run should benefit the overall economy by subsuming farmers, producers of finished goods, creating mass scale employment, increasing government revenue and hopefully cleansing the muck that lies in our storage and distribution. If all falls into place, then organized retail market is then expected to reach approximately $260 billion by 2020. It would augment income levels of all stakeholders to the tune of $35-45 billion a year, new employment generation to the tune of 3-4 million directly and 4-6 million indirectly. With foreign multinationals setting up shop across the country, the government exchequer would likely bloat up by $25-30 billion per year. The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are likely to prosper too and learn the concepts of enhanced production, higher productivity, assured supply, quick payment and better quality. It will further boost the organized sector growth – a sector that is already growing at an impressive 24 per cent in the last 3 years. The retail sector would also increase the farmers’ income – who at the current stage are on the threshold of marginal living at best or on the verge of committing suicides at the worst. So, of course, it is inevitable for India to allow FDI in retail and the writing on the wall is also very clear. But amongst all this, almost everyone is missing out one moot question, which is fundamental to the success of the Indian retail story. Amongst other clauses that the government has put, one interesting clause is that these large retailers have to essentially source their supplies from the small and medium enterprises to the tune of 30 percent. But then, this is a universal clause and does not essentially mean that it is the Indian SME segment that is going to benefit from the same. And this is where we have our biggest threat. The question is: would Indians take pride to pick up Indian brands from these stores? The bigger question is: do we have enough Indian brands which can stock the shelves of these monstrous giant outlets? In fact the entire debate of organized retail short-changing the farmers and producers is all baseless, simply because retail survives finally on what sells. And if Indian producers and manufacturers are able to produce brands which are in demand, then they definitely would get shelf space. It is no secret that more than 60 per cent of what Walmart sells in the US is sourced from China. The same holds true for the Tescos and the Carrefours of the world. The British always prefer home-grown apples over imported ones, especially the Cox variety; and thus the retailers are seen selling the domestic varieties more than the imported varieties. In order to avoid mass resistance, it is general practice that many luxury brands take their goods for finishing to their home nation and then tag the product as a domestic output. In this light, a survey by Harrison Group showed that around 65 per cent of rich American consumers buy ‘domestically made’ products whenever possible. Japanese too prefer the products to be finally processed at local units than to be imported finished goods. This is true for most of the east-Asian nations. To some extent, American companies such as GM and Chrysler were bailed out because they represented Americanism – evident from the way these are used in American movies – of course, apart from other economic reasons. As recent as in August 2011, the South Korean tobacco association campaigned against Japanese products; and in October, Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asked the government to purchase only domestically produced goods and requested the President to ban foreign items in the nation if the same were being produced by local companies. In fact, with respect to national pride, the best case in point is South Korea. It’s perhaps the country I appreciate the most throughout the world; more than China, more than Japan.When compared to India, it is a dot of a nation, but thanks to their sense of national pride, they have made unprecedented strides in all sectors. South Korean schools promote usage of local-brand purchases among students and a criticism to this is perceived as criticism to the nation. In spite of worldwide success, Nokia and Blackberry are still not able to gain substantial market-share in South Korea and Samsung Electronics dominates the market with over 48 per cent market share. In fact, the Republic of Samsung (as it is popularly called) touches almost every aspect of life in South Korea. Google has merely 20 per cent market share in South Korea while domestic search engines namely Naver and Daum dominate 90 per cent market share. In automobiles, the top car brands are either from Kia or Hyundai or SsangYong, which out-compete the BMWs and Mercs of the world. On the roads of Seoul, spotting an American or a Japanese car is a total rarity – and I am saying this from the personal experience of trying to estimate the ratio! It’s not that the Korean cars look bad or are of bad quality. They look stunning and each one is better than the other. So the fact is that consumers don’t buy their national products by sacrificing quality. The government policies were such that the local manufacturers were given all the support and a very competitive environment to improve quality by competing locally – unlike in India where we opened up our markets like cheats allowing the legacy Ambassadors to compete against the snazzy then post-modern Hondas. It was similar to allowing players to compete in the Olympics without having held good quality national games to nurture talent. Read More.... For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Gandhi has been my favourite for seminars on leadership and management for years! In fact, in the last chapter of my first book Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, I described him as the ultimate successor of Krishna as a management guru! The reason is simple! To me, there is no greater a management guru than Krishna; and the Gita is my ultimate guide to management! Krishna guides a handful of five brothers to victory against the army of a hundred brothers in the mythological Mahabharata, and in a similar way, Mahatma Gandhi guided us to Independence against all odds! Whether Krishna was true or not is debatable, but Gandhi was for real! And what we all know about Gandhi is that when he died, he said, “Hey Ram, He Ram, He Ram,” – though now even that is debated by various scholars. However, what many of us don’t know about Gandhi is that he used to read the Gita daily and called it the most important guide to success.
So what is it about the Mahatma that makes him such a revered figure even when it comes to management and especially marketing? For that, we have to perhaps study a little bit about his past and look at world history on the whole. World wide, freedom from the oppressor always meant violent struggles! Freedom was always synonymous with violent revolutions. You conquered with the power of violence and you got freedom by fighting violence with violence! But India had a peculiar problem! The problem was our prevalent religion. Gandhi himself called Hindus cowards. I wouldn’t say that, but we sure were complacent, patient and tolerant and relatively the most peaceful race in the world. We had not developed in us the spirit of war and violence! And therefore, when it came to motivating Indians and bringing them out for a violent revolution, even the man who defeated Gandhi’s own candidate in the Indian National Congress (INC) elections and became the President of INC – Subhash Chandra Bose – failed miserably. His war cry – “Give me blood, and I will give you freedom” – would’ve worked in every part of the world... but for India! And Bose finally had to leave India to collect his army from outside India to fight the Indian war of Independence! Gandhi, of course, was a keen observer and a quick learner – a key trait of a great marketing man! This man, with a burning desire to succeed in getting India freedom and realizing that violence didn’t appeal to the common Indian man, changed and did what was never done world wide – again, a great trait of a good marketing success story is being first! And Gandhi surely was the first to bring to the world, the concept of non-violence! This concept made him the TIME magazine’s Man of the Year way back in 1930 and won him followers ranging from Martin Luther King Junior, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi amongst others over the years.
At first, non-violence was looked as the stupidest tool of revolution. But Gandhi knew what he was doing. He knew how to market his concept because he knew he was satisfying an existing need – the need to participate in the freedom struggle and throw the British out, which was combined with a desire to not be forced to take up arms and risk one’s life in a violent manner. He knew that his concept was a great solution to this need. The next thing he had to do was to connect with the masses and spread the word. In those days, when newspapers were a luxury, telecommunication absent and even transport and connectivity a rarity, getting the message across the length and breadth of this huge nation was the biggest possible challenge. Gandhi decided to go about it man to man! He always had a great respect for the end customer. He had said, “The customer is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.” And in his struggle, the end customers were the masses. To connect with them, he gave up his suits and ties. In fact, to connect with them, his marketing campaign included burning of foreign clothes and making khadi. Many like Tagore didn’t find it logical. But being a marketing man, Gandhi knew it was helping him connect emotionally with his audience and convey his message across. The common man oft en understands symbolic gestures better than great works of poetry. And Gandhi reveled in such symbolic gestures. Being a great leader, leading from the front was never an issue, but what many Indian leaders fail to do even now in these days of easy connectivity, he did way back in the early 1900s. He went to his masses and became a part of them. He walked with them and inspired them to walk along with him. His new attire – the khadi – was something the common man identified with; and his half-naked clothing was symbolic of the man whose support he wanted – the unfed and suffering Indian looking for salvation. As they say, there is nothing to beat a great word of mouth! The word of his work with masses spread like fire and soon the entire country was finding out ways to follow the activities of this man of peace, who was talking of giving India independence and looked closer to achieving it than anyone had ever had!
As a great marketing brain, he had done a great SWOT analysis. He knew his opponents and competition – the British – well. He knew that unlike, say the Nazis, the British were more cultured and believed in being fair and had a court that they were answerable to. So he knew that it would be almost impossible for the British to kill him if all he did was to walk and talk of peace. He used their weakness to be ruthless to his advantage and used intellectuals amongst them for his own PR! Not to forget, he used fasting as a great tool to drive home the message – that he was not scared of losing his life when it came to the cause.
But perhaps the biggest marketing tool behind a great success story is always the art of owning a simple uncomplicated line in your customer’s mind… Marketers spend millions to do it! That’s what marketing is about finally – owning that one line in your customer’s mind. Be it “Just do it” or be it “Taste the thunder”, if you own this one line in your customer’s mind, you have cracked the marketing code. And Gandhi owned the line “non-violent movement”. It was the perfect positioning line for him for the market he was catering to. And thus, success had to be his. Today, years after his death, our nation is using Gandhi to market itself, by printing his snap on all currency notes; celebrities across the world are wearing him on their t-shirts to market themselves better, United Nations is using him to market itself by declaring October 2 as the International Day of Non-Violence; and the Congress party is marketing its NREGA programme by calling it the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA programme! Commercial companies are not far behind, with Mont Blanc making its India presence felt with the launch of its Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition pen. Inevitably, when it came to this year’s Hall of Fame issue, we felt Gandhi on the cover was the best way to market our magazine to you… no doubt he was the Mahatma of marketing!
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